Abusing working from home

[dowie]

Should also be noted that some places pretty much enforce working from home 1 day a week by implementing hot desking and not providing enough desks!

 

[jaybee]

Should also be noted that some places pretty much enforce working from home 1 day a week by implementing hot desking and not providing enough desks!

Yes, this is actually how it started originally apparently a few years ago at my place.

In answer to all the other questions and points, I can just summarize by saying that yes, management is extremely poor currently. Another issue is actually that one of the key managers that should be addressing these issues, is one of the very people stretching what is acceptable and also has a very poor attendance record.

Simply down to poor management if people are getting away with all of that, I don't understand how you could doss off that much and not get pulled up on it. Must be barely any work that actually needs doing.

It's the complete opposite, permanently. We are hugely busy.

I think it depends on the role. Currently in my team, it's causing major disruption.

 

[ultralaser]

As others of said - a practice like this needs a policy as a foundation to prevent abuse.

Key points being:

1. It's a privilege and not a right (although good luck if it's written into contracts)
2. Needs to work on a permission basis
3. Absolutely relies on reliable connections/infrastructure etc. at home. If the power fails then you come in.
   
4. Days with important meetings etc. are off limits
5. Measurable productivity - ensure that expectations are clear.
6. 1 day a week is an arbitrary amount. In my opinion it should be deliberately vague.

If it was with me, i'd work with HR to put something in place that is fair, but manageable.

Clearly spoken with experience, very good points.

 

[Caged]

You might as well abuse it yourself then really whilst you can. Good time to pop out for interviews as well if you were thinking of leaving.

 

[ultralaser]

You might as well abuse it yourself then really whilst you can. Good time to pop out for interviews as well if you were thinking of leaving.

And this is why senior managers worry about it :/

 

[dowie]

You might as well abuse it yourself then really whilst you can. Good time to pop out for interviews as well if you were thinking of leaving.

I guess that depends on your workplace, IME it would be a bad time - an interview could involve an hour of travel there and then back + an hour for the interview. Fine if no one checks up on you working from home but not so fine if you're in touch with your colleagues through the day. You'd need to explain your absence... Dr/dentist appointment etc... which you could also use if you were in the office nd just popped out for an hour or do.

 

[Gaijin]

And this is why senior managers worry about it :/

Indeed, this sort of toxic attitude from a few people, leads to flexible, progressive working practices being revoked or otherwise policed/conditioned to oblivion.

 

[jaybee]

Indeed, this sort of toxic attitude from a few people, leads to flexible, progressive working practices being revoked or otherwise policed/conditioned to oblivion.

Yes. The old saying, "give them an inch and they'll take a mile" comes to mind.

I can totally understand why some places - as old school as it may appear - just don't have a policy in place at all for work from home, i.e. they don't do it. As a manager it's so much easier to not have to deal with it and it simplifies everything.

I would totally miss it for sure if it went and it would be a bit of a "told you so" moment for the people that are doing the above things.

 

[Caged]

And this is why senior managers worry about it :/

In this case the senior management seem completely on-board with working from home meaning 'taking time off'. I don't see why it's up to the OP to carry the weight of people above them because they can't seem to understand that they're meant to be working. Busting a gut over it isn't going to improve the quality or quantity of work completed to a noticeable level, but not giving a crap will improve the OPs mental health.

HR/senior management should absolutely have a handle on the situation, but it's not the OPs job to make that happen. If nobody cares about the current dysfunction past looking at it and going "heh nobody does any work here" then the OP really has nothing to gain by trying to do the equivalent of pushing water uphill. It's less effort to find a better place to work than would be required to manage upwards in an attempt to deal with this mess.

Unless the OP has a stake in the company or feels that there's something unique about their situation with their current employer then they don't owe them the effort required to try and turn this situation around. If they wanted to promote you into a leadership role (and obviously increase your pay appropriately) and actually give you the required authority over a team's WFH practises then by all means give it a go.

 

[rubberduck]

No one posted the Mitchell and Webb skit yet?

 

[memyselfandi]

We're very flexible with WFH mainly because it's not as if most of us are actually in teams with people in the same office as them ... my team for instance doesn't have more than one person on any site so we already using SfB etc all the time to communicate so working from home makes no real difference. I wouldn't like to do it all the time as you miss out on the side conversations etc in the office but I do tend to work from home 2-3 days a week. Also some of our internal infrastructure has issues which means its actually more reliable, connectivity wise, to work from home.

That's not to say that there aren't some of our sister teams which haven't had "issues" with people taking the ****. One person I know spends a lot of his time managing his rental properties instead of working and is always doing it after coming back off leave. He has had time when he has been banned from doing so until his manager changes and the next one gives him another chance.

 

[dacads]

Had one recently where the guy is working / baby sitting

 

[HungryHippos]

I'd like to work from home more often if I could, but I think it works best with clear goals or project work you can get on with.

Depending upon what I am doing, I can certainly do more if I am not getting distractions all the time.

At the moment I can do it with permission from TL and a valid reason, with moving house recently it's more often than not something happening around the house which I need to be around for.

 

[Semple]

Our team and manager successfully work from home all the time, as we're professionals and we behave and treat each other like adults (at work anyway ).

If you don't trust certain people to work from home responsibly, get rid of them in favour of people you do.

As above, quite a few members in my team WFH typically on a Friday, everyone is contactable, emails get answered etc etc. I'm actually about to move more of my working hours to WFH rather than in the office. A lot of it just comes down to trust, and that your manager is happy with your work performance.

If we suddenly went through a phase of slacking off and work not getting done, then i'm sure this would all get reeled in and everyone would need to work in the office.

As others of said - a practice like this needs a policy as a foundation to prevent abuse.

Key points being:

1. It's a privilege and not a right (although good luck if it's written into contracts)
2. Needs to work on a permission basis
3. Absolutely relies on reliable connections/infrastructure etc. at home. If the power fails then you come in.
   
4. Days with important meetings etc. are off limits
5. Measurable productivity - ensure that expectations are clear.
6. 1 day a week is an arbitrary amount. In my opinion it should be deliberately vague.

If it was with me, i'd work with HR to put something in place that is fair, but manageable.

It's nice that in our workplace those rules are effectively a given that everyone abides by.

 

[AHarvey]

12: People having really poor microphones/comms setup at home if at all, causing a lack of communication for any meetings or team conversations for that day.
13: Response speed during major incidents taking longer
14: People blaming remote connectivity issues on their poor broadband speeds
15: People having powercuts and "broadband" issues seemingly all the time
16: People using work from home to prevent sick days totting up by stating that they will work from home whilst ill. In reality they are in bed doing nothing. i.e. Genuinely ill sometimes.

What are your thoughts on home working and do you face any of these issues at your workplace?

I worked for 7 years at an online gambling company, we had a large team of home hosts and generally, it was a nightmare.

for points 12, 14 and 15 especially we used to get all the time because they were allowed up to 2 hours a day of technical issue time. We had one lad called James who asked for a shift off so he could watch the football, it wasn't allowed. His shift comes around, I'm giving the team brief in our team chat room and he asks the most basic of questions, he'd been there 2 years longer than I had. Turns out, it was his dad hosting for him so he could go to the football.

It takes a special attitude to work from home AND actually work! I for one love it. I get a lot more done working from home but I generally can't be bothered with the distractions of an office.

In the end, I suggested that management put rules in place that stated they had to have a backup machine and way of connecting to the internet so that if there was a power cut or a tech issue they could carry on working. 18 months after I left the company, they decided to make all the home hosts redundant. As you say, it can work very well, but people take the **** and ruin it for everyone!

 

[Caged]

There's a strange - almost backwards - attitude to home working that I'm picking up from some of these replies. It seems like the people advocating fairly restrictive work from home policies would also end up coming down in favour of spending money filtering social media sites for productivity reasons and completely missing the point that somebody choosing to spend all day on Facebook instead of getting anything done isn't going to become worth employing just because you block access to a website on a corporate network.

Managing people and assessing their contributions to the team/organisation isn't easy, it's not supposed to be easy either. Trying to replace quality team leads etc. with a set of policies and assuming that as long as those policies are being adhered to then good work must be getting done is foolish.

 

[mufc802]

I worked from home last week, it was my most productive and stress free day of work I've ever had in 4 years of working. I had the comforts of home, therefore my perfect levels of lighting and background noise, as well as a much more comfortable chair.

In addition to this, I didn't have the stress of the commute, or the need to leave my desk for a long lunch break to get away from people.

When at the office, about 70% of the time I am forced to stick earphones in just so I can drown out annoying people who seem to shout on the phone, as well as people who have conversations whilst standing right behind your desk, or even having a conversation over the top of you!

Since I can Skype with a headset from home, I can do my work just as effectively if not more than when I go into the office. I don't have meetings due to my role, except perhaps a monthly meeting.

Unfortunately my company has a negative view towards people who want to work from home - you need a damn good excuse to do so, or be "higher up" in the company.

 

[AHarvey]

There's a strange - almost backwards - attitude to home working that I'm picking up from some of these replies. It seems like the people advocating fairly restrictive work from home policies would also end up coming down in favour of spending money filtering social media sites for productivity reasons and completely missing the point that somebody choosing to spend all day on Facebook instead of getting anything done isn't going to become worth employing just because you block access to a website on a corporate network.

Managing people and assessing their contributions to the team/organisation isn't easy, it's not supposed to be easy either. Trying to replace quality team leads etc. with a set of policies and assuming that as long as those policies are being adhered to then good work must be getting done is foolish.

I think it really depends on what the role is. I've worked with developers who work from home, they are normally active outside of office hours, early in the morning when everything is quiet, they get their work done and you see the results from it. If not then you can take steps towards finding a solution. While at the gambling company, our home workers had set schedules and tasks that had to be completed at set times as they were customer facing roles. In that situation, a strict and restrictive policy was needed.

 

[Caged]

In that case though you'd have a fairly strict approach to policy regarding turning up for shifts etc. if they were office-based staff. The guy who went to a football match rather than doing work is unlikely to have been a top performer if the job was office-based. My point is that people who have issues with remote workers are possibly blind to how poorly these staff might perform in an office with set hours, but just don't have a good way of assessing their contribution beyond "they are in the building, that's good".

 

[jimjamuk]

I wouldn't bash the WFH stick - Id ask where the management is in all this. I've done 4 days a week at home and as long as you are there over Skype / lync / telephone and you can dial into meetings then its not about sitting in front of you pc at 9am and not moving until 5. I used to start about 7 for an hour - take my kids to work then work though til about 4. Cook tea then catch up for an hour before I turned off.

Basically I bet those that are taking the pish at home are the same ones that don't do a lot in the office either